What do IBM layoffs mean for New York's chip initiative?

Big Blue is being tight lipped as usual about how many employees are getting the ax, but at least some of the jobs being cut are in semiconductor R&D.

Reports of IBM initiating a new round of layoffs have been intensifying in recent days. According to the IBM employee group Alliance@IBM, as of late afternoon Friday (June 14), the total number of jobs that had been reported eliminated totaled nearly 2,300.

According to the Alliance@IBM website, http://www.endicottalliance.org/, some 500 of the jobs that have known to have been eliminated have been from the Systems and Technology Group, IBM's hardware division, which includes not only the company's microelectronics activities but also servers, storage systems and other hardware.

The Bloomberg news service, citing Alliance@IBM, reported Thursday that the layoffs that had been reported so far included at least 165 semiconductor R&D jobs. But that total is all but certain to climb.

Lee Conrad, the administrator of Alliance@IBM, said the group has seen analyst reports speculating that the total number of IBM job cuts worldwide could totally between 6,000 and 8,000. Conrad said that sounds about right and speculated that the number of U.S. job cuts would likely be 4,000 to 5,000.

Conrad said his group should have more complete information next week as reports continue to come in.

Big Blue has been notoriously tight lipped about layoffs in recent years. The firm did not respond to an EE Times request for information about the layoffs.

Conrad's group believes that states where IBM is a major employer should force Big Blue to disclose concrete information about job cuts.

"It should be mandated that IBM publicly release these job cut numbers," Conrad said in an interview. "For many years, IBM has been hiding these things. For a company that gets taxpayer money that should be a mandate."

Conrad notes that the latest round of layoffs—which are taking place worldwide—continue to the trend of IBM decreasing the size of its U.S. workforce. Ten years ago, he said, IBM had over 160,000 U.S. employees. With the latest cuts, that number is now below 90,000 he said.

US Semi co.s committed suicide by training Engineers from competing countries. Where would TSMC or Samsung be w/o many hardworking technologists who got their education & work experience in the US - starting with Morris Chang ( ex TI ) himself.

I guess the main idea is that we jettison all our manufacturing and services ultimately only holding brands for which a small number of people will collect royalties. Unfortunately this will be a bad trip: the majority out of real work will eventually get poor, hungry and angry so they will string the rich minority high; the foreign manufacturing nation will stop paying anyway since if all the actual wealth creation goes abroad then eventually they will develop their own consumer market and be able to afford military on par with (or better than) ours...

Russia may have lower taxes but that usually is offset by the necessary bribes, extortion and outright theft. Trust me.
As for China I have been there and I still hold my judgement, it is still a communist country and it shows and feels. It still may collapse or explode in our faces ...

You mean these companies are unpatriotic. After all it is OUR government, is not it? Yes I blame them and if they move the manufacturing abroad there should be a punitive tariff on their products entering this country. Unless we want very small government, Somalia-style anyone?

without there own Customized Chips that differentiate them from likes of HP, intel, Dell & other Server vendors, IBM System business will fall too, and their software business is dependent on selling Servers. All in 1 bundle.
I don't see IBM getting out of making their own chips in near future,
IBM Still own an 8" inch Fab in Vermont, that still makes profit..
I am pretty sure they can make it work on their 300mm Fab as well.
IBM hires and fires Engineers on a regular basis, This is just part of the cycle. Number of IBM Designers, process R&D and IBM research engineers still working will surpass lots of other companies.

With fab cost skyrocketing, there is no way that IBM internal need enough to justify its own fab. I bet that total annual wafer from IBM fab is way less than Wafers Qualcomm acquires from TSMC. It will be much cost effective for IBM just simply uses TSMC.